To anyone not familiar with SSDs, our title might not seem that striking, but it represents a huge step forward in storage technology within a very short time. It also speaks highly of ASRock for again leading the way in advancing storage, as they are the only to incorporate a new SSD innovation into their Extreme 6 motherboard; this of course being a PCIe Gen 3 x4 interface that could accommodate M.2 SSDs up to blazing 32GB/s speeds. Although it may be some time until we get such a small form factor SSD travelling at that speed, this does mean that the Extreme6 is the only motherboard in the world that can accommodate our Samsung XP941 as a boot drive today. In fact today, we are going to be testing not only that XP941, but also the Plextor M6e PCIe x2 SSD and the Samsung 840 Pro SATA 3 SSD.

Just to step back a bit though, it was only on their last round of releases that ASRock introduced the first motherboard with an integrated PCIe X2 M.2 connector. This was the Fatal1ty 990FX Killer AMD motherboard that we reported on a month or so back. That board wasn’t the only that they could credit as being the first of its kind. Although that connector wasn’t included in their Intel Z87 Extreme11/ac motherboard that we also reported on, they pretty much left any competition behind by incorporating 6 Intel SATA ports along with 16 SAS/SATA ports to that board. These SAS/SATA ports were hooked up to a LSI SAS 3008 PCI Express 3.0, 8-port, 12Gb/s SAS and SATA I/O controller and LSI 3x24R Expander that enabled the use of SAS or SATA SSDs. In our subsequent testing of 8 HGST 12Gbps SSDs, we were able to push this board to 6GB/s speeds and 850K IOPS. This has NEVER been done with a consumer motherboard alone ever before. Back to the Z97 Extreme6…

UNDERSTANDING HOW DIFFERENT SPEEDS ARE ACHIEVED

Even before we get into the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 motherboard, the simple fact that we are testing three totally different SSD interfaces merits an understanding of how the speed of each is achieved. SATA 3 for example, does not run directly through PCIe lanes to the CPU, and as such is limited to SATA 3 (6Gbps) throughput of somewhere in the area of 575MB/s maximum in reality. Both the Samsung XP941 and the Plextor M6e M.2 SSDs use PCIe lanes which eliminated that SATA barrier, 4 lanes for the XP941 and 2 lanes for the M6e. In understanding PCIe 2.0 lane throughput, a theoretical 500MB/s is stated as throughput per lane. This means that the M6e can reach 1GB/s (theoretically), whereas the XP941 might reach twice that at 2GB/s. This is never quite possible as a result of hardware components and their constraints.

A basic understanding of the connectors helps things along just a bit more. The SSD on the bottom is the 840 Pro with a SATA connector, Samsung XP941 on the left with a M.2 X4 connector, and the Plextor M6e on the top right with the M.2 X2 connector. The space in the XP941 is denoted as the ‘M key and only these connectors can pass PCIe 4 lane (X4) speeds. The M6e on the right contains both the ‘M Key’ and the ‘B Key’ and can only pass PCIe 2 lane (x2) speeds. Just as a point of interest, all three can pass the SATA signal but the two top M.2 connectors are just a bit different. This comes into play with SATA Express where the same M.2 connector can be used for either SATA, PCIe x2 or x4. We saw this a bit in our testing of eight different SSDs, some SATA and some PCIe but all M.2.

ASROCK Z97 EXTREME6 MOTHERBOARD

The Extreme6 supports Intel 4th and 5th generation Xeon and Intel 13/15 and i7 processors that use Socket 1150 seating. This is very important as Socket 1155 is very close but not quite compatible and some might find themselves damaging pins in trying to make it fit. It doesn’t work. It is a Digi Power 12 Phase design, supports Dual Channel DDR3-3200+ (OC) memory, and has 2 PCIe 3.0 x16, 1 PCIe 2.0 x16, 2 PCIe 2.0 x1 and 1 mini-PCIe with a 15? Gold Contact in VGA PCIe Slot (PCIE2). This is in addition to the 1 SATA Express, 10 SATA3, 1 eSATA, 1 Ultra M.2 (Gen3 x4), 1 M.2 (Gen2 x2/SATA), 10 USB 3.0 (4 Front, 6 Rear), and 5 USB 2.0 (4 Front, 1 Vertical Type A) ports. Here it is being inspected by the boss!

The ASRock Z97 Extreme6 also has 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection (Realtek ALC1150 Audio Codec), Supports Purity Sound™ 2 & DTS Connect, DVI-I, HDMI and Display Port options, along with Dual LAN: 1 Intel® Gigabit LAN, 1 Realtek Gigabit LAN. It supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™ and NVIDIA® Quad SLI™, However, it is a very important point to note that, if you have a PCIe X4 M.2 SSD connected, this immediately takes away four lanes, eliminating the possibility of any SLI configurations.

For our purposes, we are running the Samsung XP941 M.2 x4, Plextor M6e M.2 x2, along with two Samsung 840 pro SSDs, along with 3 27″ monitors connected to our EVGA GeForce GTX 770 and all at 2560 x 1440 resolution.

Thanks for the article Les! It’s great to see you opening up your reviews to more hardware while still keeping it relevant to storage technologies! I like the mobo but i still say that two 840 pros in raid 0 are still the way to go perf wise. That said i can clearly see the patern of where the industry is moving and that’s the M.2.

Vext

Can you elaborate on that? All the benchmarks suggest that’s not the case, but I could be misinterpreting the data as I’m new to the I/o performance conversation.

scope4live

I am just happy to see the XP941 being so fast as is. For me it’s win-win as the size of my 1U’s shrink, and at they same time they get faster, and bootable. I will use them to load my data into a RAM template, and rarely write to them. Lets hope our M$ gatekeepers will let us use 24GB out of 32GBs w/o any performance issues.

Mick

Hi I am glad I look at this site quite often I think you do a real good job on everything ssd.

Also I am thinking of buying an extreme 6- Z97 1150 socket with a 4790k canyon this xmas.

Plus the Samsung M.2 XP941 128 I just don’t know?

I was originally going for Asus Maximus Ranger plus the 4790k Canyon and two Samsung 120 gb 850 EVO SSD’s Many thanks if you can help.

MikeGR7

It’s easy. You’ve seen the 840p results. Multiply by 2X and take -10% out. You’ll find that you are around the same “1GB/S” read/write territory as the M.2’s. BUT you also get to enjoy that sweet fast ramp up in performance in the low end up to 8K. The 4k write will also be about double.

Of course the could be used that way but you have to consider that the RAID set of two XP941 SSDs would be restricted to the lowest speed which is dual lane travel. That might get you a negligible improvement on the XP 941 alone in the ultra M.2 slot. Just to be sure I will try to do this prior to taking off for China in a few days…

dravo1

Just to cover all the bases, can the M2s be in a mixed RAID with equal sized SSDs?

felix

I wonder…what if there were 2 M.2 x4 slots on that board….combined with 2x XP941….

Then any thought of decent gfx, other than integrated…might be gone. Intel needs to increase total PCIe lane count for something like that.

felix

I wouldn’t care for 1x8PCIE for Graphics ( don’t think it would hurt performance much) and 2x4PCIE lanes for M.2…but you’re right…Intel needs to increase lanes to 24+ for something like this to happen properly…

Yar Nunya

X79! 40 pci-e lanes if using a 6 core SB-E or Ivybridge-E. Too bad it came out in 2011 and X99 isn’t here yet and no X79 boards with M.2 connectors.

Eric

I’m actually pretty satisfied with Intel’s iGPU. I’d love to see two M.2 slots running at PCIe x4, combined to RAID 0, and which can be booted from. Oh my…

Yar Nunya

Exactly, like if an X79 board were to sprout some M.2 connectors in a larger than regular ATX size then one would have 40 PCI-e lanes with which to delegate 8 lanes to GPU A, 8 to GPU B, 4 or 8 to your m.2 SSD’s, and use the rest for the other crap that needs to ride the pcie bus. Perhaps in X99?

LES – Great review. I’ve read the other reviews for the motherboard and the XP941. The other reviews weren’t exactly positive about two items. I figured if anyone knew it would be you. 1. Can Microsoft Windows 7 be installed and used with the XP941 and the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 motherboard? Some authors were under the impression that Windows 8 or 8.1 would work but Win 7 would not. 2. Will TRIM work with the XP941 or does it have to rely on native garbage collection without TRIM? This year Samsung is already mass producing and distributing their new SP951 successor to the XP941. The new model is PCIe 3.0 x4 instead of PCIe 2.0 x4. How about a review?

Mike

It works with any OS if you set up your usb boot drive correctly. Xp941 with Windows 7 OS.

Jim Vogts

Hey LT. Happy with the Z97 / XP941. Thank You. Right now I run only on die GFX and a single PCI-e 1X connector to an external Analog Devices DSP Rack, and the XP941 w/ OS+Apps. on a Vertex 4. So my question is can I dump my ancient Vertex 4 OS+Apps. SSD, and use the 2X M.2 with the M6e w/o any bandwidth issues. This means no GFX card, on die GFX only, 1 x PCI-e 1X for connections, an XP941 in 4X slot, w/ a new M6e in the 2X slot. Dual M.2’s means a new smaller 1U too. Have you tested both slots simultaneously….Thanks.

Les any idea of both M.2s work simultaneously…? I would not have any other storage devices, Small 1U for a new build. Thanks

Roger

hello, I do not understand, the intel i7 4790k has only 16 pci lines, and to use the PCIe x4 M.2 requires 4 lines pci espress. by connecting a video card gtx760 on x16 pci expres not work well to find only 12 ???? thank you very much

Absolutely! You can also RAID both if you wish and, if that board was an ASRock, you could run both at 4 lanes, getting full potential.

wesley

Hello could you help me out with some info iv got an asrock exteme 11 x99 board and 2x 240gb ultra m.2 that i have slot in the boad is there a way i can raid them both together to make it 480gb?in the the bios i have selected raid when i reboot there is no option for raid when i press ctrl-i hope someone can help me out thank you 🙂

Jérôme Lanteri

I have this mother board with i7 4470 and XP941 SSD 256Go on port M2_1. Boot on Archlinux via grub… add 2 HDD WD 2To and 1 SSD OCZ Vertex2 256Go. All on SATA3 port (not ASmedia). Also, i have problem with the mother board and the SSD OCZ. On the Bios, it see the SSD drive, but sometimes not read it on boot menu (but ok, this i don’t care). But… 80% of boot times, the SSD is not show and then i can not mount him. I try change port, and put him on first SATA3 port… same problem. So, maybe you would be curious and want to try to add a SSD drive with this config for check if this is a bug from Asrock ? I send Asrock message and let message about that on there forum, but never answer and delete the messages on the forum (i think they don’t care and just don’t want potential customers know this problem).

Asrock use his money for provide big adds on his product, but maybe this product his far from works fine, i would like to be sure. Thanks

Fernando Seiti Abbe

Recently read your article Understanding M.2 NVMe RAID SSD Boot and 2 / 3x M.2 NVME SSD RAID0 Tested . I wonder takes to put two Samsung 950 Pro 512GB in RAID and boot in my Asrock Z97 Extreme 6 on Windows 7 , and knowing that one slot M2 is X4 and another X2 , the speed would be limited to the lower, or the average sum of the two ? Many thanks if you can help .